Fallout 3, Discuss Options

[Stahlseele]

I'm disappointed, going as a stupid character (Int 1) doesn't seem to affect dialogue choices much. it was a riot in FO2

no, not the dialoge choices all that much.
those are mostly affected by your speech skill.
the int of 1 will hurt you in the long run, as the number of skill points you get per level depends on your int . .
with an int of 10 and that one perk you can get 23 skill points per level . .

[Wounded Ronin]

Actually went and got it. After strugging with some ffdshow technical issues, I got it to run.

It's not exactly the same as Fallout 1 or Fallout 2. However, it's also a good game. I feel like I can see both sides of the coin and plan to write a more detailed review for a friend's gaming website.

Basically, if the designers peed on anything, they peed on the turn-based strategy of Fallout 1 and Fallout 2. My hunch is that whereas melee characters were ultra powerful in Fallout 2 and Fallout 2 they'll probably be screwed in Fallout 3. However, in terms of immersion, characters, and so forth, Fallout 3 is probably superior to the earlier Fallout games. Let's face it...lots of characters in Fallout 1 had a conspicuously limited and semi-broken set of ways they could respond to dialogue and game events, and there was a lot of poorly written dialogue and text descriptions in those games. Fallout 3 probably handles characters, immersion, and quality of script a lot better.

[Stahlseele]

they'll probably be screwed in Fallout 3

haven't tried VATS yet have you?
if you can get close enough, have STR and close combat skill on moderate, a good weapon and use VATS, you can kill allmost anything . .
especially later on, with a burning sword, an electrically charged power-fist, the super sledge or the Death-Claw Gauntlet . .
stay out of firing arc and go into vats, if you have enough AP through agility and are in range, you can basically act as if you had SRone or two Wired Reflexes, as you will hit several times, before the enemy or rather victim gets enough time to turn around and face the music . . but of course, it's like in Shadowrun . . you play a melee Character, you have to find a way around the simpe fact, that the opposition has things like grenades, rockets, nukes, miniguns, laser-gatlings and plasmathrowers . . but at leat early in game, if you can keep your baseball bat in good shape, you can whack most everything using VATS

[Platinum Dragon]

I'm disappointed, going as a stupid character (Int 1) doesn't seem to affect dialogue choices much. it was a riot in FO2

Yeah, it's a shame you can't go with dumb dialogue options, but even in Fallout 2, after the first town (the dialogue with Torr is awesome), you can't really follow the plot (you have no way of finding out that Metzger has Vic, and even if you could, he you're too stupid to make a deal with him, so you'd have to take on a band of well-armed slavers with nothing but a single-shot hunting rifle). You basically had to metagame your way through the entire plot, because you were too stupid to actually find out what you had to do.

Given the choice between leaving it as it was (low int is funny for a little while but basically ruins the game) and changing it to the current situation (low int means less skill points) I'd take how it is now. It would be nice if they allowed for an idiot character to complete the game, but that would likely mean a LOT of extra work. I think they've managed to find a nice balance between the Fallout / Arcanum model of completely stat-dependant dialogue (which fell over in certain places) and the stat-irrelevant dialogue you get in most RPGs (which is kind of boring), by occasionally allowing certain perks / stats / skills to give extra dialogue options while keeping the basic choices the same for every character.

[hobgoblin]

Just got done playing it a bit. So far it's pretty cool and with my setup, the graphics are spectacular. Coming out of 101 was actually a bit weird. They did get the eyes right though. There was an article recently where the games guys or CGI guys; something, had figured out that the eyes needed to move, well maybe not randomly but not looking at a fixed point all the time.

Carl

most likely a aspie thing, but i didnt notice at all...

[hobgoblin]

by occasionally allowing certain perks / stats / skills to give extra dialogue options while keeping the basic choices the same for every character.

iirc, a similar thing was used in neverwinter nights 1 (never played 2, maybe i should try and get hold of it, now that i think about it).

basically you had conversation options with some skill or stat next to it that would open up new conversation branches.
(and some other silliness, like a drinking game based on constitution (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif) )

its something i hope more computer rpgs make use of, as it opens up the chance of going thru a game in a (mostly) non-combat way.

[Cadmus]

Fire ants. Hate them. Hate hate hate.

Dude but think of it! if the science dude does get them to shrink back to normal size...you get fire breathing ants of normal size. SURE there tiny, but think of how many are in an ant hill? and they breath fire!


For those of use in the south part of the US of A we all know well how many ants are in a fire ant nest heheeh.

[Stahlseele]

i did the right thing . . i did not kill the ant queen, only the 5 guards, then went back and got the reward from old doc crazy down there . . then went back and killed the queen and got the karma reward for doing exactly that and went back to the little boy and made sure to get him to rivet city for even more . .

[Hocus Pocus]

almost bought the game today at circuit city. 15 percent off all games on account of them closing down the store...was tempted a bit...

[Fix-it]

15% off of how much?

I know for a fact that they have a clearance crew working those stores right now, as opposed to actual employees. (all the real ones got fired on election day)

they raise the price of everything, then "markdown" from there.

[nezumi]

It was $50 at Wal-Mart, $60 at CC. 15% off would make it... $51.

[Wounded Ronin]

I cannot help but think, much like I thought with Fallout 1 and Fallout 2, that Fallout 3 would have bigger balls if instead of "futuristic" Small Guns like 10mm pistols you were running around with 1911s and M14s to make it more Americana and in line with the retro theme of the rest of the game. Like, I'd rather fumble around with my M14 than with my "chinese assault rifle" which is chambered in 5.56.

[hobgoblin]

that did that on purpose, to dodge the gun nuts that would complain endlessly about their fav real life gun and caliber not being in the game or represented wrongly.

also, its not real life after the bomb, its a alternate future, seem from 1960, after the bomb...

[Stahlseele]

the chinese communist thread DID invade Canada if i got that part right . . so the chinese stuff has it's place . . i like how EVERYTHING with the CHINESE before the name is essentially worse than the same without the chinese in front of it O.o
wonder how that goes over with chinese players

[hobgoblin]

everything but the assualt rifle (didnt mess around much with the sword tho).

maintain it well and it will outperform the non-chinese assault rifle...

altho i guess it could have worse accuracy. and given how it was modeled...

[Stahlseele]

i didtched automatics as soon as i could get my grubby paws on some energy weapons ^^
difference between laser und plasma
Laser shoots red, leaves green glowy dust . .
Plasma shoots green, leaves green glowy sludge ^^

[Wounded Ronin]

the chinese communist thread DID invade Canada if i got that part right . . so the chinese stuff has it's place . . i like how EVERYTHING with the CHINESE before the name is essentially worse than the same without the chinese in front of it O.o
wonder how that goes over with chinese players

The Chinese assault rifle is the cat's furry balls! It does a lot more damage than the FN FAL looking "assault rifle".

[Platinum Dragon]

The Chinese assault rifle is the cat's furry balls! It does a lot more damage than the FN FAL looking "assault rifle".

Wait 'till you get your hands on the 'Xianlong' (or something like that) assault rifle. Does even more damage and can be repaired with normal chinese AR's. Or Sydney's 10mm Ultra SMG. That thing is nuts.

No, I won't tell you how to get them. =P

[Backgammon]

Hmm, I've been playing and I have a "problem" were I stumble into advanced quests I'm not supposed to be doing... sometimes bypassing 3-4 quests I was supposed to do before actually being supposed to do this one. Anyone else get that?

[Wounded Ronin]

Wait 'till you get your hands on the 'Xianlong' (or something like that) assault rifle. Does even more damage and can be repaired with normal chinese AR's. Or Sydney's 10mm Ultra SMG. That thing is nuts.

No, I won't tell you how to get them. =P

It's probably "shenlong", the mythical dragon.


The anal retentive aspects of my personality are really showing as I play this game, though. I have taken a lot of time to cart all the loot my character can carry back to Megaton in order to amass stockpiles of stimpacks and ammunition. Partially because I was expecting things to be has hard as in Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 whereas Fallout 3 is easy. But just by visiting Megaton repeatedly my character has like 150 stimpacks bought from the stores by trading in each and every piece of Raider armor encountered in the beginning of the game, like 700 rounds of 5.56 ammo, 150 shotgun shells, etc., and I can really go nuts because these items I like to stockpile are weightless. Of course, this is basically what you needed to do in Fallout 3 to keep your character running through all the difficult combats.

My favorite weapon is actually shaping up to be the Hunting Rifle. The ammo is cheap and my character is always running around with 5 of them so as to always be able to Repair. In spite of its low damage and ROF it's so dependable and seems to give terrific criticals with headshots. I feel like there's lots more panache in blasting someone's head off with a bolt action rifle than there is dumping an AR mag into them. There's so much more finesse involved with using the Hunting Rifle.

Next game I think I'll play as a female melee specialist. I'll see what I end up doing mentally when I don't need to be carrying around several duplicate firearms for Repair purposes.

[Wounded Ronin]

Hmm, I've been playing and I have a "problem" were I stumble into advanced quests I'm not supposed to be doing... sometimes bypassing 3-4 quests I was supposed to do before actually being supposed to do this one. Anyone else get that?

Not me. But then again I try to anal retentively "clear" all the quests from earlier areas before exploring later areas.

[Stahlseele]

Hmm, I've been playing and I have a "problem" were I stumble into advanced quests I'm not supposed to be doing... sometimes bypassing 3-4 quests I was supposed to do before actually being supposed to do this one. Anyone else get that?

[ Spoiler ]

yeah, very first time i played . . i basically bypassed half of the game, as i went to the vault with the geck as soon as i found out where the vault is.
even without know what is in there, i just wanted to see what the vault was like . . next thing i know, Guy fawkes is sledgehammering his way in out
in front of me and i'm looting enemies left and right . . then there's the geck(which is called geek in german by the way) and the enclave is taking me
along to meet the boss . . from then on, only back to brotherhood and following the assault on the big water cleaner and sacrificing myself to start it.
and suddenly, it's over and i'm like:"wait what?"

even if i only spoilered what one should not do to not skip half of the game

[Audious]

[ Spoiler ]

yeah, very first time i played . . i basically bypassed half of the game, as i went to the vault with the geck as soon as i found out where the vault is.
even without know what is in there, i just wanted to see what the vault was like . . next thing i know, Guy fawkes is sledgehammering his way in out
in front of me and i'm looting enemies left and right . . then there's the geck(which is called geek in german by the way) and the enclave is taking me
along to meet the boss . . from then on, only back to brotherhood and following the assault on the big water cleaner and sacrificing myself to start it.
and suddenly, it's over and i'm like:"wait what?"

Thanks for the spolier. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohplease.gif)

[DireRadiant]

Spoilers! use em please.

[Stahlseele]

apologies. please update your quotes as i included spoilers. sorry if it's too late . .